KIRKUS REVIEW

A 17-year-old girl grapples with
depression, insecurity, and unresolved trauma from her father's death in a car
accident 14 years earlier.

Molly spends her summer working at
FishTopia, a business that lacks customers but doesn't want for grunge. But
Molly loves the job; it usually entails watching reruns of Golden Girls while sitting on the countertop, sharing takeout food with
her co-worker Alex, a cute, funny guy she loves hanging with but whom she's
decidedly undecided about. Meanwhile, she's crushing on her 30-something therapist,
who is trying to ease her depression and her ginormous self-esteem issues and
to work out her feelings about her dead father. What's more, Molly suspects her
younger sister, who looks like a Victoria's Secret model, is dating Alex. And,
her mother has latched onto a crazy idea—that baking her daughter a different
cake each day for 100 days might cheer her up. Many readers will identify with
Molly as she struggles with debilitating self-doubt and flaccid interest in
making college plans amid friends who seem positively sugar-highed when
discussing SATs and university prospects. The cast is largely white. Teen humor
abounds, as do topics of Hot Topic–loving girls, local boy-bands, hemp
handbags, and annoying younger brothers. Some readers may be troubled by
plausibility issues—a cake a day? Really?—and a case of sexual abuse is
disturbingly left unresolved.

Still, for a book about depression,
this is a pretty enjoyable one. (Fiction.
14-18)

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